Mercor, a link between Openai and Openai and Yuan Discussions are being held with investors based on marketing documents viewed by TechCrunch and two sources familiar with transaction negotiations, with the help of field experts needing to train and refine their underlying AI models.
Returning investor Felicis is considering double the C Series C company, according to two sources. Felicis declined to comment.
One person said the company is currently valued at $10 billion or more. One person said this is the $8 billion target valuation the company discussed a few months ago. However, the terms of the final deal may still change.
The company told potential investors that it already has multiple offers. Venture capital firms have been in the lead with Mervemor to value the company’s valuation $10 billionpreviously reported information.
TechCrunch also learned that the company has raised at least two new investors through special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to raise funds for potential deals.
The company’s last round was announced in February, a $100 million Series B valued at a $2 billion valuation led by Felicis.
Mercour was founded in 2022 with nearly $450 million in annual operating interest rate revenue, one person said. The company told TechCrunch in February that its annual revenue (calculated by multiplying the latest month by 12 times) has reached $75 million then. In March, Mercor CEO Brendan Foody released Arr on X $100 million.
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The company told investors it is expected to surpass the $500 million ARR milestone, coming sooner than Anysphere According to a familiar source, the startup that makes AI-encoding assistant cursor a cursor. Anysphere famously beat $500 million About a year after its product was launched, in ARR. Unlike Anysphere, which is still burning cash, Mercor generates $6 million in profits in the first half of this year. Forbes Report.
Mercor earns revenue by providing companies with professional field experts to train AI models (such as scientists, doctors, and lawyers) and charging hourly Finder fees and matching rates.
The company claims to provide data tags to five top AI labs, including Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft and Openai, as well as Tesla and Nvidia. Sources said a portion of its revenue comes from a subset of these brands, including OpenAI.
To further diversify its business model, Mercor has been telling investors that it is adding more software infrastructure for reinforcement learning – a training method in which the model or agent’s decisions are validated or controversial, allowing it to merge counterfeedback and improve over time. The company also intends to eventually build an AI-driven recruitment market.
Even though Valuation of $25 billionAnd Turing Labs and other data tag companies such as Scale AI are also expanding to RL services. Someone believes Openai’s recent recruitment platform Can lead AI giants to create their own RL training services for human reproduction.
When approached the comments, Foody told TechCrunch: “We didn’t try to raise funds at all”, “we refuse to offer every month.” He also said the company’s ARR is above $450 million. However, he clarified that the company’s revenue includes the total amount of payments made by clients for the service before the contractor receives its portion. He added that this is a common accounting practice recommended by audit companies and uses and scales AI by competitors.
The startup was founded in 2023 by Thiel Fellows and Harvard dropout Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO) and Surya Midha (COO). The three co-founders are still in their twenties. To take the company to the next level, Mercor recently appointed Sundeep Jain, former chief product officer at Uber, with decades of experience as its first president, Forbes reported.
Mercor has been recently sued by rival AI to misappropriate trade secrets. Scale AI claims a former employee who later joined Mercor “stole more than 100 confidential documents about Scale’s customer strategy and other proprietary information” Review.
Maxwell Zeff contributes the report
